I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.

~ Robert Frost

The journey, the challenge is to step into the
projection room and stop being lost in the script.

In Damascus (Dimashq) the Syrian capital, however it is not only the capital of Syria but the capital of the whole world, especially for those who are oppressed from neighboring countries and for those who love passion, Jasmine, history, and love itself.

With its old roads and ancient sites all over, with its roses, every spot you look at you cannot help but smile at the love and peace that surrounds you. You will never feel that you are a stranger, or poor, or homeless. Here, in Syria, you are in your motherland, and you will learn the original language of this country as soon as you drink its fresh water!

In Dimashq, you will see doves flying around our children who were learning peaceful songs, and the first alphabet of civilization, which found in their motherland Syria, Lattakia, Ugarit.

“Smash your sword and carry your shovel and Follow Me . . You are Syrian and Syria is the center of the ground!)

“To cultivate peace and love in the midst of the earth . . .”, a message from Syrian deity Baal 5000 BC.

That's why Syria welcomed every refugee from Iraq, Armenia, Palestine, and Lebanon. It does not matter where are you coming from, which war torn zone you are leaving. In Syria, you will live the same as your Syrian brothers and sisters. No refugee camps. No racism. Our houses are yours. You are our brother/sister in Humanity.

War and blood is not our language. Greed and hegemony is not our code.

However, defending this land is our ideology. Until the last breath in our souls, till the last son of our children, we are going to sacrifice for this mother Syria!

In Syria, there are love stories as beautiful as any western song (“I close my eyes and the flashback starts…”)

In Syria, there are great soldiers, and they represent all of us. They are well educated men. They were raised in Syrian families. My brother. My friends. Her brother. Her son. Her husband. Her friends.

When the war forced us, even Syrian girls joined the fight. We met the call of our duty to defend our motherland.

Those in the West, the politicians who parasitize the American people have only a statue of liberty but not the real thing.

They launched their war of inhumanity upon the land of freedom, the oldest civilization in the world, under the name of freedom and democracy.

By the help of the horrific kingdom of camels and sand, Saudi Arabia, this war was launched against us.

It is a war to starve Syrians. To genocide Syrians. To remove every feature and remnant of Syria from this region.

This war is fought by proxy fighters, savage takfiri groups who bomb ancient sites, kill as many people as possible and displace the rest.

Later, the West sends its “coalition” to bomb our country and support the terrorists.

But Syria is the phoenix which will rise from the ashes. It is the beating heart of every real free person in this world who is prepared to resist. Syria is not alone.

The hypocritical international community has murdered our kinds, made others orphans, assassinated our scientists and backed the takfirist since 2011, and even before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

And in the United Nations, there is Saudi Arabia, occupying a seat on the Human Rights Council. Is this not the ultimate hypocrisy?

Syria will survive. It will be the reason that the whole world survives these warmongers.

Syria will open the gate to the peaceful world by the sacrifices of it sons and the support of its friends.

Pray for Syria

Afraa Dagher is a political analyst currently residing in Syria. She has made numerous media appearances commenting on the current state of affairs inside Syria as well as the nature of the current crisis. She has appeared on RT, PRESS TV, and is a regular guest on Activist Post writer Brandon Turbeville’s Truth on the Tracks radio program. Her website is http://www.SyrianaAfrona.wordpress.com.

The journey, the challenge is to step into the
projection room and stop being lost in the script.

Gracefully she approached,
in a dress of bright blue silk;
With an olive branch in her hand,
and many tales of sorrows in her eyes.
Running to her, I greeted her,
and took her hand in mine:
Pulses could still be felt in her veins;
warm was still her body with life.
But you are dead, mother, I said;
Oh, many years ago you died!
Neither of embalmment she smelled,
Nor in a shroud was she wrapped.
I gave a glance at the olive branch;
she held it out to me,
And said with a smile,
It is the sign of peace; take it.
I took it from her and said,
Yes, it is the sign of, when
My voice and peace were broken
by the violent arrival of a horseman.
He carried a dagger under his tunic
with which he shaped the olive branch
Into a rod and looking at it
he said to himself:
Not too bad a cane
for punishing the sinners!
A real image of a hellish pain!
Then, to hide the rod,
He opened his saddlebag.
In there, O God!
I saw a dead dove, with a string tied
round its broken neck.
My mother walked away with anger and sorrow;
my eyes followed her;
Like the mourners she wore
a dress of black silk.

Translated by : Farzaneh Milani

Simin Behbahani - Simin Beh'bahani (born July 20 , 1927, Tehran, Iran) is one of the most prominent figures of the modern Persian literature and one of the most outstanding amongst the contemporary Persian poets. She is Iran's national poet and an icon of the Iranian intelligentsia and literati who affectionately refer to her as the lioness of Iran. She has been nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in literature, and has "received many literary accolades around the world."

The journey, the challenge is to step into the
projection room and stop being lost in the script.

"I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

- Rainer Maria Rilke,Letters to a Young Poet -

The journey, the challenge is to step into the
projection room and stop being lost in the script.